Up to this point, most mobile sites have been developed by re-hashing traditional Web content and squeezing it onto the small screen—an unfortunate “Mini-Me” approach to mobile Web design. The result? While the traditional Web becomes more useful and creative every day, the significance of the mobile Web has largely stalled. The mobile Web has yet to realize its awesome potential, and the problem isn’t a technology issue like you may be already thinking. The problem is design, or rather, a lack thereof, within the mobile medium.

1. The Mobile Web is Not the Little Sister of the Traditional Web.

What makes a mobile site so different?

It’s not the screen size—it’s the intent of the user. Very often, traditional Web users browse the Web for entertainment or to kill time. Even when traditional users need to perform work-related tasks, they are easily sidetracked by Twitter, YouTube, or any of the thousands of social networking sites.

Mobile users, on the other hand, typically browse the mobile Web when they are in need of specific information. These experiences tend to be much shorter than they are on the traditional Web, and users rarely browse for entertainment purposes. Let’s just be honest with ourselves—if a user could be in front of a computer, that’s where he or she would be.

Suppose that you were offered a chance to view a new Red Hot Chili Peppers music video on your phone. Would you actually navigate to the video and watch it, when you could just as easily view it on a speedy home computer? Re-purposing traditional Web content and stuffing it into a mobile browser is a recipe for disaster. Instead, it’s time to look at the mobile Web as a uniquely distinctive medium.

2. Give People What They Want, When They Want It.

All mobile Web users across the globe want the same thing: the ability, at any time, to easily access any information.

What this means for mobile Web designers and developers, is that first and foremost, we need to approach mobile Web sites as an information-architecture problem, and NOT as a technology problem. Mobile Web sites should be formatted in a way that allows users to easily navigate and make decisions. Users don’t want to dig through the clutter of a traditional Web site to find the tiny link they were looking for.

Companies that merely ensure their existing Web site is viewable on mobile phones, have, for the most part, wasted their time and money. This is primarily because this type of mobile Web site will likely be hard to navigate through, or be terrible looking. All too often, users get frustrated when they can’t find the content they are looking for. This fact is exactly why wireless carrier “decks” exist.

3. Build Unique Mobile Content, or Don’t Bother Building Anything at All.

Mobile is a unique medium and it should be designed with this idea in mind. If you are not willing to rewrite, modify, or create custom mobile content, then don’t bother creating a mobile site in the first place.

This point is best illustrated by an example:

A university could easily mobilize its existing Web content to create a mobile Web site, but do freshman really need to be able to schedule classes from their phone when they are lost in the Quad? The answer should be, obviously, no.

Wouldn’t the university mobile site be more effective if it was limited to custom information that is relevant for on-the-go students—such as mobile maps, a one-click phone number directory and faculty office hours? The answer is yes.

4. Make It Useable. Make It Useable. Make It Useable.

Mobile Web sites MUST always work on every phone. Period.

What this means is that mobile Web designers need to consider multiple screen sizes, as well as multiple technologies. A mobile Web site should dynamically transcode content such as forms, images, videos, ringtones and layouts, so that any user, with any phone, can enjoy a seamless browsing experience. Users should never have to tell a mobile site what kind of phone they have—it should already know.

Consider that for the traditional Web, designers and developers need to account for differences between Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Opera, screen sizes, color depth, Flash versions, and more. Why would mobile be any different?

5. Don’t Forget About Design. Seriously.

Mobile Web surfers are still consumers, and consumers are deeply impacted by design. Don’t believe this? Allow us to introduce you to a fine company called Apple.

Because the concern at the forefront of people’s minds has been technology, brands and agencies often neglect the importance of design in the mobile space. It is almost assumed that because the mobile Web has to work on every mobile device, it can’t also look great. We couldn’t disagree with this mindset more.

When a mobile marketing firm approaches a mobile Web design project, it should design a series of visual layouts for a client that illustrate how the mobile site will look on a variety of different devices. For example, our firm refines a selected visual design concept into a WML layout (old school WAP 1.0), an XHTML-MP (WAP 2.0) layout at several different screen sizes, and (when possible) an iPhone-specific layout. The goal here is to ensure that no matter what phone is viewing the content, it will look its absolute best.

In Summary:

1. Think about the mobile Web in a new way. Get creative.
2. Clear and concise information-architecture specific to mobile is an absolute must.
3. Create compelling mobile content or don’t bother at all.
4. Mobile sites have to work—always. No ifs, ands, or buts.
5. It’s called mobile Web DESIGN. Not mobile Web cram-it-on-the-screen.

About Punchkick Interactive

Punchkick Interactive is America’s first design firm to focus exclusively on full-service mobile marketing. The firm specializes in creating text-message campaigns, mobile games, Flash Lite content, branded mobile Web sites, custom BREW and Java ME applications, iPhone apps, mobile media distribution systems, Bluetooth proximity marketing campaigns, and more. For additional information about mobile marketing visit http://www.punchkickinteractive.com or call (800) 549-4104.

• By early 2006, thirty countries had exceeded 100% per capita cell phone usage
• In 2006 there were about 241 million mobile phone users in the United States — or, approximately 80% per capita mobile phone penetration
• According to industry estimates, it won’t be until 2013 that the US will top 100% per capita penetration
• Two thirds of mobile phone users are “active users of SMS text messaging.” What does that translate to? Approximately 1.8 billion people are actively texting today
• Globally, there are twice as many active users of SMS as are active users of email
• In the U.S. alone, roughly 300 billion text messages were sent in 2007
• SMS is typically read within an average of 15 minutes after receipt and responded to within 60 minutes
• While 65% of e-mail is spam, less than 10% of SMS is spam
• 19% of text messagers say they use text messaging as a means of communication between themselves and colleagues
• 62% say they use text messaging to communicate with friends
• 55% say they use it to communicate with their significant others

Source: Mobile Marketing Watch

Additional mobile marketing statistics

Sony Ericsson announced today at its Developer World conference plans for a new technology that bridges Adobe Flash Lite and Java ME development platforms.

The technology, called Project Capuchin, allows Java ME (formerly known as J2ME) applications to use Flash Lite as the front-end interface for mobile phone applications.

“In using Flash, you typically can’t access properties of the phone. But with Capuchin, you can get at information and applications in the phone and use that info with the Flash display,” said Christopher David, director of long-term platform planning at Sony Ericsson.

The Java ME/Flash Lite connection will be a two-way street, so both can invoke the other, according to Ulf Wretling, director of Sony Ericsson Developer World. But most importantly, Flash content is packaged as a Java JAR file for use on Java ME-compatible mobile phones.

Read the full article on InternetNews.com

NextWave Wireless Inc. (Nasdaq: WAVE), a global leader of all things WiMAX, announced that it has retained Deutsche Bank and UBS Investment Bank to explore the sale of its extensive spectrum holdings in the United States. NextWave’s U.S. spectrum footprint covers over 251 million people in the United States and includes major markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Houston, and Detroit.

What drove the surge? Possibly Allen Salmasi, chief executive officer and president of NextWave Wireless, when he remarked:

Since the completion of the recent 700 MHz auction, we have received multiple offers for our U.S. spectrum assets. [N]ow is the perfect time for us to sell these valuable assets while network operators are trying to finalize their band plans and spectrum holdings for their continuing 3G and planned 4G rollouts. Monetizing the value of our substantial spectrum assets would allow us to further strengthen our balance sheet, retire debt, and continue the commercial introduction of a wide range of innovative wireless broadband and multimedia solutions such as our high-performance WiMAX and RFIC chipsets, advanced multi-mode, multi-band TD-CDMA, WiMAX and LTE enabled base station platforms, breakthrough MXtvTM and TDtvTM mobile television systems.

Learn more about Punchkick Interactive’s mobile marketing capabilities.

Hopefully, it will be the first of many featured items for Punchkick Interactive on Adobe.com. The Punchkick Interactive Mobile Ocean screensaver can be viewed within our company Web site on our Flash Lite Screensavers and Wallpapers page or purchased from Handango.com.

Learn more about Punchkick Interactive’s mobile screensaver design capabilities.

Narayen made the comments during a conference call with investors, explaining that Apple’s recent release of an iPhone software developers kit (SDK) has afforded his company the necessary tools to finally begin work an iPhone version of Flash Player.

“We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone,” he said. “We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.”

Adobe hopes to deliver their missing product via Apple’s new App Store, set to open in June alongside the release of iPhone software version 2.0.

So much for Jobs’ comments about the iPhone not being able to support Flash because of a limitation with the Flash player. It seems ridiculous that Apple’s position is a limitation in the Flash Player given that the Flash Player works perfectly on the Nokia 810, countless other portable devices, the Skyfire browser, Pocket IE, and Opera Mobile 9.5. I am very happy to hear about Adobe’s new position on the issue.

Source: Apple Insider, Wall Street Journal

Learn more about Punchkick Interactive’s iPhone software development capabilities.

How many Windows Mobile devices
Recent information for Windows Mobile devices states that devices were 11 million shipped in 2007 and 20 million are expected in 2008. Also, according to Strategy Analytics, in 2007 1/3 of Windows Mobile devices shipped in North America (33%) with other regions representing other values: Western Europe (29%), APAC (20%) and the rest of the world (18%). Visit Microsoft to provide guidance on future handset shipments but you can visit their site to get a sense of the range of devices they have in market today. This deal is different than other licensing agreements Adobe has with OEMs. Because the license agreement is with Microsoft, it will be part of their Windows Mobile OS in the future meaning any OEM that will ship a Windows Mobile device will have Flash Lite 3 pre-installed. Today these OEMs include HTC, iMate, Samsung and others.

Sources: IntoMobile, Reuters

I am also amazed that there are 1,350 pages in google search for “mobile ocean punchkick.” This basically means that when people post illegal downloads, they don’t even pay attention to scrubbing out the company name! At they very least I expect them to have setup keyword driven links back to our site. Did they? Nope.

Other copyright violations pertaining to Flash Lite software.